Deforestation in the Amazon

The Guardian has a short recap of environmental milestones of this decade – from deforestation in the Amazon to the heat wave in Europe in 2003 to Hurricane Katrina to the rapid decline in food supplies across the world. It’s well worth checking out.

The prosperity of China

As if giving time to golpista dictators or Charles fucking Krauthammer wasn’t enough – the Washington Post is talking about Venezuela (excuse me, Hugo Chávez) again. As a former resident of the Washington area (Manassas, if you must know), the WaPo has seriously declined in readability over the last decade.

Today’s story is no exception. It’s not a discussion on investigations of US companies or the state re-subsidizing food markets or Human Development Rankings. All news stories (among many others) broke just this week. Instead…

The Washington Post wishes to talk about golf. Chávez called golf ‘bourgeois’ (as if he erred in judgment, as if that isn’t true!). Chavez asked on Alo Presidente:

“Can someone tell me, ‘Is this a sport of the people?’”

“Noooooo,” government ministers and other officials in the audience dutifully replied.

“It is not,” Chávez concluded.

And so the shit storm begins. The state department weighs in. The wealthy and well-off of Caracas weigh in. Chávez is in the end, misinformed. Fidel and Che used to play after the revolution in their military fatigues, they say. “There’s even evidence that Che Guevara was a good golfer,” [said Julio Torres, director of the Venezuelan Golf Federation], “from back in his days in Argentina.”

Chávez correctly points out the blights of decaying neighborhoods surrounded by the oases of golf courses – a sport, shall we mention, is booming. The booms that the Post speaks of (such as 500,000 golfers in China today – “a state that Chavez reveres”) have come at a huge price on its many impoverished people.

Golf courses tear up vegetation and natural lands, displacing animals and destroying local ecology. Then they import sand, exotic trees, etc. But it is the cost of maintenance alone that is astronomical on the community. Not only will the course usually take from the public coffers – taking water from residents who truly need it, or poisoning it first with pesticides and herbicides.

In the US alone, golf courses bring in more than $50 billion dollars a year. This kind of money, flowing upwards in Venezuela and other tourist areas, will only cause more problems.

Opening up golf courses, which in the US used to be the most racially stratified sport, means nothing if one cannot afford to buy or rent clubs, shoes, adopt the dress codes and set aside hours a day when you have to work to survive.

Besides:

Chávez and other government officials have said golf courses could be better used as housing for the poor or as public parks. In Caracas, clogged with traffic and marked by slums and old apartment blocks, there are few who would deny the need for more green space.

And if Chávez doesn’t convince you, let George Carlin do all the work:

The day began with Lula da Silva at the bottom and concluded with Dominican president Leonel Fernández Reyna.

UPDATE (7:35pm):

Dominican Republic head Leonel Fernández Reyna left the situation for the very end of his speech (translation mine):

We can not conclude without reference to the situation currently prevailing in Honduras.

This organization of the United Nations issued a resolution condemning the coup that took place in that Central American nation in June this year and raising the return to democratic order. The Organization of American States, the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League assumed the same position.

Despite worldwide condemnation of this attack on democracy, the de facto government of Honduras has continued in power, highlighting weaknesses in the implementation of measures by the international community. Now, President José Manuel Zelaya, the only legitimate president of Honduras, who was scheduled to make use of the word today before the General Assembly, chose, with great display of daring and personal courage, to return to his country, and right now is just waiting for us, the representatives of the peoples united in this global forum. We can act with the same dignity, with equal responsibility and with the same level of commitment to the predominance of democracy, freedom and justice.

UPDATE (7:00pm):

El Salvador’s Mauricio Funes, whose country helped to sneak Manuel Zelaya into Honduras, said (translation mine):

Among the objectives is obviously the need for strengthening regional democratic institutions to avoid episodes like the Honduran military coup which you know very well.

We close down, in aggregate, any possibility of a return to times of authoritarian, military or civil-military dictatorships. We must not allow the coup in Honduras to set a precedent that endangers the achievements in regional stability and democratic institutions. The de facto government of our sister nation has ignored the clamor of the international community, which is that you return Honduras to constitutional order, through dialogue and political negotiation with the full respect for Honduran’s fundamental human rights and liberties.

Until constitutional rule is restored in Honduras, which means the immediate return of President Zelaya and the creation of a government of national unity under the spirit of the San Jose Accord, the elections being prepared in the country lack the legitimacy and the transparency necessary to ensure reliable results that can help resolve the crisis.

UPDATE (5:30pm): Uribe did not mention Honduras, focusing instead on trying to “validate the democratic credentials of our security project.” It was long winded and has been refuted better elsewhere.

UPDATE (4:10pm): Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Heard the end of the speech on the webcast, but no document of the speech yet. In time.

UPDATE (2:30pm): The most consolidated democracy south of the United States is Uruguay. Outgoing president Tabaré Vázquez addressed the General Assembly by emphasizing Uruguay’s position as a peace-keeping nation and one of general economic stability. But, beyond platitudes for human rights and a nod to Michel de Montaigne (“there is no greater destiny for human beings than taking care of the trade of being human.”) Right. Respect for international law. Check. Talking about putting words in action. Check. Thanks – and good night.

UPDATE (2:18pm): Just received this from my Google Reader from the United Nations:

The United Nations system in Honduras has called for the urgent establishment of a constructive and transparent dialogue to overcome the current political crisis facing the country, which earlier this week witnessed the return to the capital of the recently ousted President.

“It is the responsibility of the State to guarantee the life, freedom and security of all of its citizens in conformity with the international human rights treaties ratified by Honduras, the Constitution of the Republic and national legislation,” the UN said in a statement issued yesterday in the capital.

“The use of force, in any form, by agents of the authorities, applied without regard to the criteria of need and proportionality, violates the right to life and integrity,” it added, also noting that the Government must guarantee the legitimate exercise of the right of assembly.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed his support for mediation efforts of President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica to resolve the crisis in Honduras, and has offered technical assistance and cooperation to help the parties reach an agreement.

UPDATE (2:14pm): Chilean President Michelle Bachelet:

The policy of quality has a positive impact on the well-being of people.

The rule of law, civil liberties and respect for human rights are all prerequisites for a democracy of quality.

There is no loger any justification for violating the principle of liberty and democracy in the name of justice or equality. Prodedural democracy is part of the ethical and political baggage of the international community in the twenty-first century.

And little by little we have started to reinforce this principle at the level of nations.

My Latin American region has been able gradually to build a single vision, which has enabled it, for example, to come rapidly to the aid of any threatened democracy, as was the case in Bolivia one year ago, or to strongly condemn democratic setbacks, such as occurred in Honduras a few months ago. For this reason, we wish today to reiterate the appeal for immediate acceptance of the San Jose Agreement promoted by the OAS. Honduras deserves free and democratic election with the constitutional President leading the process.

Yeah, Obama’s speech was eloquent. He spoke on a whole lot and it was great to see him pledge the return of the United States into the international arena (“our bills are paid” taking on symbolic as well as literal meaning). He had to pay lip service to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the situation in Palestine. But what about Zelaya? Nothing concrete…

His speech is well worth checking out or watching. But one needs actions, not continual words. (For a great overview, in case you’ve missed the latest developments, check this great post by Gabriel at Jews san frontieres)

Lula da Silva was the first up in the Americas. His government is currently harboring President Zelaya in their embassy in Tegucigalpa. He did not mince words, and has thus far stepped up to the plate:

“Unless there is political will, we will see more coups like the one that toppled the constitutional President of Honduras Jose Manuel Zelaya.”

“The international community demands that Mr. Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil’s diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras.”

“The international community must stay alert to safeguard the inviolability of Brazil’s diplomatic mission in Honduras.”(Lula da Silva)

It has been a stellar couple of weeks for Bolivian president Evo Morales. He’s leading the polls for the upcoming presidential election. He just negotiated his debt with Spain and delivered a speech at Leganés in Madrid (check out Machetera’s wonderful translation).

Now, he’s at the United Nations Climate Change Summit just before the General Assembly’s annual meeting. Like his speech in Madrid, Morales decided to focus exclusively upon the environment, from Bolivia Rising:

“We must change the capitalist lifestyle,” he said, since the capitalist system favored obtaining the maximum profit possible, without taking into due consideration the lives of others or the environment.

It was necessary to stop living for the purpose of pillaging or looting the Earth, as today, improving living standards was seen first and foremost as an accumulation of capital. Rather, we must consider in detail the “well-being” of human individuals while also guaranteeing the well-being of Mother Nature, he said, adding: “Mother Earth can exist without human life, but not the other way around.”

More from the UN Climate Change Summit when I have to wade through some of it.

What interested me most was this passage, quoted below:

Until now, the Amazonian peoples have been very isolated, and have not been involved in the class strugle in Peru. Do you think now, with the process of globalization, they are becoming a part of the broader social struggle in the nation?

Their struggle is not about class. Their struggle is to defend the natural environment where they have lived for millennia. But now this nature—which they regard as their mother—is under attack. The timber companies cutting the trees, the oil companies poisoning the rivers—this is what their uprising is against. They do not understand it as a class struggle. But nonetheless, it is a struggle against the multinational corporations which are defended by the government. So we understand that it is related to the class struggle.

Of course, this is a huge break that is just now occurring, all across Latin America, and indeed, across the world. And because Blanco, a former campesino guerrilla fighter imprisoned and exiled across the continent for forty years, who once believed in the vanguard party and attempted to form his own in war and in peace, and today is the editor of Lucha Indigena, is significant. Today, he admits,

And when I speak of the indigenas of the Amazon as a the vanguard, I do not mean it in the Marxist-Leninist sense, that others should copy their methods. And when I speak to indigenous peoples, I speak of “collectivism,” not “communism.”

To me, this seems to be the last two decades coalescing into a coherent ideology that is still forming: one that accepts multiple definitions of nation and will struggle to effect the outcomes that any government (of any stripe) that attempts to define or suppress it. No longer can one movement be pegged as “communist” or what have you (although “terrorist” is the new shorthand that does not carry as much weight as its predecessor) for resisting. More so, this is a huge break from the past.

No longer are struggles based solely on class. In my research on El Salvador (which can be extended to Central America as a whole), class trumped culture/race/gender/etc. The 1932 insurrection in western Salvador is now a rebellion against institutional racism as well as economic grievances, that it was instituted from the grassroots and had no marking of communist plot, controlled by Moscow or the PCS offices in San Salvador. This had many reasons: the belief in mestizaje, the cultural elitism of some members of the vanguard, the international tendencies to follow the USSR, and in the 1930s, Stalinism – which meant purges and clearly defining where the people stood. Moscow calls the revolutionary shots (in fact, the Comintern scolded Jorge Fernández Anaya for the uprising, which we now know he [nor Martí] could not control).

Despite the passage of time, one will always find the narrow-minded and ideological clinging to the past – I see it in Central American narratives all the time, on both sides. Thus, Blanco, who speaks at some length in the article at Trotsky and Stalin and the worldview of the 1960s and 1970s, he concedes:

The youth who organized the conference yesterday—they want answers to the questions of today. We don’t have to resuscitate old debates from the last century. It is enough to still believe that another world is possible. I am old, and if I can teach something about Marx, Lenin and Trotsky and so on, this is something I can contribute. I still believe in standing up and struggling and not pleading with the government…

Asháninka men making their voices heard. The Asháninka, like scores of indigenous people across Peru, are protesting against government laws that violate their land rights. © David Dudenhoefer.

As with other interviews with 1960s guerrillas the issues of arms and nonviolent methods come up, which Blanco discusses at length. In short, peaceful means should be advanced (which has gotten him into heat with the Sendero Luminoso) and arms are only justified through self-defense. He also agrees with the Zapatista movement in Mexico. He believes in coordinating with the people behind the backs of the major political parties. It is in this vein that Blanco now sees the world.

In accepting the demands of indigenous peoples (and young people in solidarity) across the world, and in particular the Peruvian Amazon, instead of seeing them as dupes and tools for interested parties, major steps are being made. And none too soon. Blanco characterizes the struggle today (in contrast to his own struggles in the early 1960s against the haciendas and their lords) as being against an “industrial latifundio,” which exploits the workers and uses agro-chemicals to destroy the soils, “[a]nd it is all for export to the United States, it is not for internal consumption.” The struggle is to save the environment from a destructive government mining and digging and drilling communities into the earth. For the old vanguards (not saying Blanco is just now coming around) to break from the past will add more grist to the mills that try, as hard as they might, to create the world that has been dreamed of for all time.

It is a struggle that has lasted for over 500 years. Today, however, our actors are getting some recognition.